She picked up the phone and dialled Pirjo at the
Sooke News Mirror
. “I have a leak for you. Write it up discreetly. And you have no idea where it came from.” In a few politic words, she put out an advisory. It was vague, but it would do the job. If she were strung up by her thumbs at the Evergreen Mall, Pirjo Raits would never give up her source. She was a nationally award-winning journalist who used her small-town stage for provincial improvement and dared her critics to try to stop her.
“Let’s get onto that licence-plate lead.” She tapped Chipper on the shoulder. “I’ll sign for your seminar. You’ve earned it. Let Shogun out for a whiz if I’m not back in a few hours, Ann. And, constable, come along for back up.”
“I’ll drive,” Chipper said.
Minutes later, Chipper sped off down the road. That left the detachment shorthanded, but they wouldn’t be far away. It was embarrassing and awkward to have only one official car like some backwoods boonie when they were next door to the provincial capital. They didn’t even have their own FB decal on the back trunk for aerial surveillance, not that they had ever been part of any. As for office furniture and electronics, they got castoffs if they were lucky.
Holly scanned Bailey Bridge near where a homeless man had died late that summer, pleased to see that the rains had ended the problematical free camping. Cold was one thing. Wet was another. In combination, they were not only uncomfortable but deadly.
Ten minutes later they entered the village of Sooke. A stable population of a few thousand in the fifties had mushroomed when a huge housing development spelled the end of the quiet fishing enclave. As prices in Victoria skyrocketed, developers bought up the picture-postcard harbourfront for condos, townhouses, and even a splashy hotel with a conference centre and wine bar. Driving an extra half an hour could save a homeowner one hundred thousand dollars. They passed the first traffic light near two small stripmalls. Fast-food incursions had been limited to McDonalds and A&W. Not even the ubiquitous Tims had made it to Sooke, the locals preferring their Serious Coffee and The Stick in the Mud. The tipping point was approaching. To update Victor Hugo’s saying, “Nothing, not all the armies in the world, can stop development.”
The car crossed Sooke River on the old bridge, the serene harbour on one side and the emerald chain of hills on the left. A pair of swans swam below. Leaving the forested hills of Saseenos, Chipper made the first right turn at Gillespie, then onto East Sooke Road. Thanks to no commercial development except for Bill’s Food and Feed, time was standing still for the moment. Houses had more acreage, which gave privacy but raised security concerns.
Gradually rising into the hills, she made another turn at the fire station onto Coppermine. Hidden by the bigleaf maple and alder foliage amid the evergreens, few homes were visible from the road. Late fall mums and asters in glass jars and fresh eggs in coolers sat for $3.50 on the honour system at makeshift stalls. This wasn’t strolling territory. Anyone who would steal eggs or chrysanthemums didn’t deserve to live in paradise.
House 1233 was at the end of Coppermine, down a long winding private road with a Beware of Dog sign. The west-coast-style Craftsman house trimmed with cedar was only a few years old. A large cream and brown Afghan hound with a long-nosed head turned limpid eyes toward her and loped over in an innocent fashion. A man in his thirties came down a temporary ramp from the deck, a puzzled look on his smooth, round face. His raven hair was razor cut, and he carried a can of soda. Holly and Chipper got out.
“Officers, hello. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?” He wore chinos, low cut boots, and a denim workshirt with an Orca embroidered on the pocket. Around his waist was a tool belt with a hammer and screwdrivers. At one corner of the yard, a shed was in progress. The dog came closer and nosed her knee with its muzzle.
“Cloudy, go now. The lady does not care for your drool.” He tossed a stone, and the animal trotted off in pursuit. “Ten months only. A baby. Good for prowlers who judge only by size.”
Jetta with the license plate in question was parked in a carport. Holly took a deep breath and scanned the yard. This was getting all too easy. In age and height, the man fit the suspect’s profile.
Holly introduced herself and Chipper to Victor Grobbo, who stood with broad shoulders, the neck of a bull, and arms folded in a less-than-happy pose. Then she explained what had happened at French Beach, watching his face for a reaction and resting her palms on her hips, slightly grazing the top of her holster. Victor brushed his hand down one sleeve, releasing a scatter of sawdust. “My God. That’s the same age as my little sister. Was the girl all right? You’re not saying that … and why come out here?”
“She’s doing well,” Holly said, then pointed to the vehicle. “But someone reported seeing your car at French Beach Saturday night. Would you mind telling me where you were from dusk to around eleven?” Knowing that the longer time frame might worry him further, she gave him a neutral stare, watching for body language. Words lied easily, and so did vocal tones. Posture, movement, and general tension were something else. Few people wanted uninvited police arrive at their home, even if no neighbours could witness the arrival.
“Saturday? Why, my wife Karen and I …” Then as his sharp, emerald eyes crinkled in mirth, he laughed loudly. Turning, he beckoned to her to come to the house. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Perhaps they had better come outside.” Holly looked at Chipper, and he notched up his posture one crank while he scanned the yard.
Holly’s defences tweaked, but a glance at a nearby clothesline changed her mind. Underwear and T-shirts, ladies’ panties, a bra, shorts, and jeans. So he didn’t live alone. She trusted her instincts, pulling along Chipper with a nod. His eyes narrowed a fraction.
The side door opened into a spacious gourmet kitchen with cherry cabinets and dark granite counters. Behind was a great room. A couple at retirement age sat on the sofa with mugs of coffee at their side. He was reading the paper. She was knitting a long and elaborate scarf. A wheelchair was parked nearby. It was hard to tell whose.
“My parents,” Victor said, motioning for them to stay seated. “They are visiting from Comox. Took the train down.” He put a hand on his mother’s shoulder, and she looked up at him adoringly. “I think you might want to talk to them.”
“The police? What’s the matter, Victor?” the mother asked in mild alarm. Her silver hair was pinned in an elegant chignon and she had taken the trouble to dress in an attractive peach pantsuit good enough for church. “Is it a neighbourhood break-in or a bear on the loose?”
“The officer tells me that someone saw the car at the beach Saturday night. I wondered where you two lovebirds had been,” He shook his finger in good natured fun and earned a blush from his mother.
The couple, introduced as Elsa and Frederick, looked one to the other. “We were down there admiring the moon like we used to do when we lived here,” Frederick said. “We had a place on Invermuir Road. An old friend next door invited us to dinner. Later we went to the beach. Why are you asking about this? What happened?”
The old woman finished a stitch and jabbed the needles into the ball of wool. “What’s all the fuss about? It was such a beautiful night. When we were young … and more daring … we used to build driftwood structures and camp on the sand. You could do that before the park went in. We like to watch the freighters go by at night. Then there are the little fishing boats, too. A few were still out. We had a boat ourselves for halibut and salmon.”
Holly explained what had happened at the park. Shaking heads and
tsks
were their response. But neither had seen anything. “It was pitch dark,” Frederick said. “But there’s an easy graded asphalt path from the lot to the beach area. Easy access is very important for us now.”
His wife gave him a bittersweet look. “You almost had a heart attack pushing me back up.”
“Sorry that you made a trip for nothing,” Victor said to the officers.
Though she felt chagrined, Holly shook hands before they left, thanking them. “Don’t believe what you see on television. We might come to a hundred dead ends before an arrest. Hopefully there will be a final turn that takes us where we need to go.”
“I was a car salesman,” the old man confessed. “The last answer before yes is always no.”
Chipper offered her the wheel in fair turnabout, but she declined. “Too good to be true after all,” she said, watching the elegant Afghan caper like a ballerina. A nightmare of grooming. “And forget any cracks about making my own luck.”
“No way, Guv!” But a ghost of a smile played around the corners of his mouth before he turned the key and hit The Ocean 98.5, a soft rock radio station. K-os was singing about crabs in a bucket.
Driving back to Fossil Bay, Chipper braked for a buck that jumped across the road. Savvy residents had a habit of scanning the perimeters. This time the animal got away, and they sighed with relief.
They couldn’t do the same for the case. The odds of solving this assault were slim to none. Endless beaches surrounded by wilderness was big territory for three people and a communication system on a par with smoke signals. Unless, as Maddie had suggested in an unfortunate truth, he struck again.
Around four o’clock that
day, Holly faxed in her report on Maddie’s attack. The young girl had seemed in good spirits when Holly made a follow-up call. “This isn’t going to stop me,” she told Holly from her cell phone. “My roomie, her brother, and I are going up to Cathedral Grove.”
“That’s a holy place. You’ll love it. I’m going to get out to Avatar Grove in Port Renfew, too,” Holly had told her, glad that the girl had not lost heart about the wilderness even though it was doubtful that she would tent alone again.
In her old camping days, Holly had always had a German shepherd by her side, the best deterrent short of an Uzi. Norman’s protests were overturned by Bonnie: “We know where she’s going, and we know when she’ll be back, Norman. The bush is her friend. In my culture, boys younger than Holly went on vision quests. Our daughter deserves an equal opportunity to learn about herself. And not just because of her Salish blood.”
On one such weekend so many years ago when her mother had revealed Holly’s deer totem, they’d been camping with the Bronco at remote Hadikin Lake in Carmanah-Walbran. During this female bonding ceremony, they ate what nature provided — trout, berries, miner’s lettuce — but cheated with sweet bannock from Great Aunt Stella’s recipe.
Chipper was overdue from his routine traffic check. Neither he nor Holly enjoyed that duty, which consisted of holing up with the cumbersome radar gun and reading bulletins when the road was quiet. In addition to erratic tourists, craning their necks for ocean views, and locals who hit 110 kph on the straightaways, West Coast Road was jammed with logging trucks from the increased cutting. That summer a truck had dumped its load in a giant pick-up-sticks accident at a wicked curve by the Seventeen Mile Pub. A century ago, horses had pulled eight-foot-thick giants past that 1895 Tudor-style watering hole. Now a busy liquor store takeout and Adrenalin Lines Adventure swelled the number of turnoffs. It was pure luck that nobody had been hurt or killed. The infrastructure was being pushed to its maximum.
Chipper’s father Gopal had been raised in a Scottish orphanage in the Punjab. Along with his wife Ishar, he had emigrated with a single suitcase and a single purpose: to build a new life in a land with more opportunities. Two decades of menial jobs had finally bought them a convenience store and ethnic grocery in nearby Colwood with a second-floor flat as their living quarters. Chipper complained about having no privacy, but with the high rents on the island, he was sacrificing his personal life for his savings account.
Four years younger than Holly, Chipper sometimes flexed his masculine muscles to assume the role of an older brother. Being the only man at a post with two females of superior rank demanded the patience of Gandhi, though when cornered by both, he turned his eyes upward, placed his hands together in prayer, and whispered, “Women.” He had the neatest desk and the most meticulous handwriting, making up in precision what he lacked in experience.
At last he came through the door, looking subdued. “Your turn tomorrow. Can’t be soon enough for me,” he said, sitting at his desk. He glanced at the last paper from the inbox, signed it, and moved it over to Ann’s desk.
“What’s the matter?” Holly asked.
“I hate giving tickets to women. The older ones remind me of my mother and my grandmother. The younger ones, brutal.”
“Softie. You can’t let everybody off with a warning if they smile at you, pretty girls or not. We’ve all had our turn, so suck it up. This post hasn’t had one complaint yet, and I intend to keep it that way,” Holly said with a mild tease. As if anyone could find anything wrong with Mr. Perfect. As an officer, he was a dream walking. Holly had no doubt that he planned to go up the seniority ladder as fast as he could. A B.A. in sociology with a 4.0 grade-point average testified to his academics.
His answer was to crack his knuckles loudly. “Huh.” Then he stuck out his lower lip, as close to pouting as he’d ever come.
“Poor baby. Tell Mom all about it. Auntie Ann can get you a hankie.” Holly gave him a light push on the shoulder.
He loosened his protective vest as he sipped cold jasmine tea left from the morning. His small nose flared slightly and he drummed his fingers on the desk. Usually his mild face was an open book. While she and Ann had their crabby days, Holly couldn’t imagine him losing his temper. He’d once confessed that he came close to decking a guy outside of Saskatoon who had split his pregnant wife’s lip with a bullwhip when she objected to his spending his pay check on rye and lottery tickets. “Then she bailed him out of jail, crying ‘My man. My man.’ Go figure,” he had said, baffled and frustrated.
His sleek eyebrows warred with each other, and he picked up his citation book. “Maybe I’ll feel better telling you guys. I was on a roll. Got a timber truck with an unsafe load. Caught another guy for using his engine brakes on the Shirley hill. Two speeding tickets. No one was drunk, but it was only eleven in the morning….”
“Every hour is happy hour for some,” Holly said.
Checking out another page, his expression grew stormy, and he slapped the book on the desk. “Then came the last one. I was more than ready to go off-duty when I saw her. My ears are still burning. What a garbage mouth. If looks and words could kill, I’d be a dead man. This girl was just plain nuts.”
Reminded of many a distasteful traffic stop, Holly grew intrigued. If Chipper nearly lost it, she must have been a pistol, in her father’s historical vocabulary. “A girl? A teenager? Are you serious?”
“She was hell on wheels. I pulled her over down at the Pike Road mailboxes. Where the salal goes way up the hill.”
Ann had amusement on her face. She and Holly exchanged womanly glances. They’d all hidden in that corridor. It was a perfect spot.
“Don’t stop now, man. This is getting juicy. Did she threaten to hit you with her purse?” In Holly’s experience, women were the deadlier of the species. Over the last fifty thousand years of walking upright, they developed wily tactics in place of brute strength. No wonder men couldn’t figure them out. Some fought dirty and had no scruples about using tears as a weapon.
“They don’t call it trash talking for nothing.” He stabbed a finger on the form. “Not only was she twenty clicks over the limit, but driving without an adult in the car. She had an L sticker. Seventeen according to her licence.” The province’s graduated system was one of the strictest in the nation. Learners were mandated to have one qualified chaperone. The large green letter on the back of each car caught the attention of the law.
Holly leaned forward and folded her arms. “So what did you do? Make her leave the car where it was?” Once up island, she let a teenager drive home because there was no alternative. But he hadn’t been drinking, and she followed him the ten kilometres on the bush roads. A good officer knew when to be flexible and when to toe the line to the exact millimetre.
He flicked a piece of lint from his shoulder. “I let her call her father on her cell phone. Luckily we were far enough east that she got a signal. I didn’t need any more complications. I wanted her out of my life fast. If Mom ever heard me talk like that, I’d get my mouth washed out with soap.”
“Was she a local?” With so few people in Fossil Bay, Holly was on her way to knowing all their names, including the family dog and cat.
Chipper gave a snort. “Negative. I know every teenager in town. The dad had to take a taxi all the way from Victoria so that he could drive the car back. We had to sit there for an hour and a half. One dude went by with his truck fender flapping, and I had to let him pass.”
“A four-hour round trip. Ouch. And I suppose he had to leave his job. That must have been one mad father.” Her own dad she could have talked into anything. Luckily her mother held the line.
“But that’s the protocol. You’re not saying I should have let her drive back to the city, are you?”
“Of course not. That traffic’s harsh. What was she driving anyway? An old beater?” Cars lasted forever in the island’s mild climate and unsalted roads. Classic ’57 Chevys, Elvis Caddies, even Rolls and Bentley owners had their own clubs and Sunday parades.
“A gold Toyota Solara. Two seater. Creamy leather from top to bottom with a sound system to blow your ear canals. The plate read ‘SAMMIE.’ There’s forty grand.”
Ann groaned. “Ouch. All my son Nick had when he went to university was a three-speed bike.”
“With the double fine, that’s an expensive lesson.” Holly gave him a thumbs-up. “Hey, you scored. She should have known better. Now she’ll have to re-qualify. With the backlogs, she’ll be off the streets for one heck of a long time.”
Chipper sharpened a pencil but said nothing. Two tiny lines were forming on the bridge of his nose. For him, that was serious.
“You’re whining about that? You’ll never make corporal with that kind of sensitivity, laddie. You need to buck up.” Ann was on her way to the closet to get her coat. A spattery rain had begun to pock the windows.
Holly saw that something was very wrong with Chipper. “Go on. Tell us the rest.”
“To be honest, I never saw it coming. First she was kind of flirty, trying to talk me out of it. Then when she found out I was for real, she turned nasty big time. Like she was used to getting her way, and I’m not talking about her brains.”
“With her looks, you mean?”
“Push-up bra with plenty on display. Eyelashes out to here. All the bells and whistles. For some, maybe, but she’s not my type. Personality counts, too. This one was a biotch, as they say on the Net.” He passed a glance at the women. “No offence, ladies. Just a psychological observation.”
“What does ‘turned nasty’ mean? Physically, or …” Holly’s eyes narrowed at this departure from the norm. “Did she make racial comments? Is that where you’re going?”
Canada had very strict hate-language laws. An effort had been made to take back the Order of Canada from a man who had issued anti-Semitic slurs. In another case, an American arch-conservative pundit had been warned to curb her language while speaking at the University of Ottawa. It was no secret that Chipper had been called a Paki, a generalized and ignorant slur for all East Indians. The taunts had started young, and tempered the steel in his backbone. At twelve in middle school, he’d been teased for carrying a curry lunch, he’d said. But his height even then and his leadership qualities brought others to his side. Holly and Ann knew the drill. They’d had their own shares of good-old-boy club jokes, tampons taped on lockers, and water-filled condoms. Women had come a long way and were finally entering upper management ranks.
He dismissed that idea with a wave. “Are you kidding? She was more subtle. ‘Too many of
you
in this country. Go back where you came from.’ That could be interpreted a couple of ways.”
Ann blew out a contemptuous breath. Holly had a feeling that Chipper was almost like a son to the older woman. She suspected that Chipper opened his heart to Ann more than he did to her, his contemporary.
“Weasel words. I hate that. So Daddy came and collected the little witch? I wouldn’t have a problem smacking her on the bum. It worked for Nick through high school,” Ann observed.
“Daddy’s little girl. Isn’t that always the case? Some people should be licensed to have children, so my parents used to say,” Holly added. “Did he make her apologize on the spot?” That would have been the first step in her household.
“You won’t believe it, but he tried to get me to admit that I had scared her and chased her down. Big bad man. Entrapment. Legal terms were flying. Never mind that she had been poking me in the chest with six-inch nails that looked like she had taped Chiclets to her fingers. Kevlar saved the day.” Chipper’s voice had been rising. Sitting back, he snapped a pencil in two.
“This is making ugly sense,” Ann said. “Legal terms, eh? So he was a lawyer, or, worse yet, a politician?”
“Administrator at UVic. VP, he said. Sure has some opinion of himself.”
Holly’s spine felt a tremble of liquid mercury, like a thermometer rising. Even if he’d been a mere professor, trouble had walked in the door. Who would have thought that a quiet little post would attract this kind of negative attention? If this escalated, fraud though it was, the public attitude would be “Not them again. What do you expect?” Every time she read about another RCMP blunder she felt personally guilty, as if the force needed to take back its reputation one step at a time. Then again, if the parent had blown off some steam, they might not hear about it again.
“What’s his name?” Now and then her father mentioned a few people, but usually only in his area. As far as she knew, there were several VPs.
Chipper didn’t have to look at the form. “Leo Buckstaff. Think your Dad knows him?”
“Rings no bells with me. UVic’s a pretty big place, and people come and go. Biggest problem in the last few years has been the bunnies.” One Easter, someone left a few pets on the campus green, and they made themselves at home on the tasty turf. Over four hundred rabbits dug burrows and polluted the grass with their pellets. To neuter or not. To cull or not? To be fricasseed for the homeless? With no foxes on the island, they all ended up trucked to a Texas ranch. Such were the usual problems in Canada’s Caribbean.
Ann was never one to waste time. “What’s the address? Assuming she’s living at home at seventeen. That might tell us more about the family.”
Chipper pursed his lips as he read. “2202 Saanich Road.”
Ann Google-mapped it in seconds, then whistled. “Jesus Lord. They have four acres on the Georgia Strait with a view clear to Mount Garibaldi. We are talking huge money. Their taxes must run close to fifteen thousand a year.”
“And the girl’s name?” Holly asked.
“Samantha. No surprise that she put on a crying show when the father arrived and not one second before. Cocky as hell and then boo hoo. You’d think she’d been beaten. A regular drama queen.”
The women exchanged understanding glances. “Typical girl tactics. Right, Ann?” asked Holly.
Ann gave a sardonic smile. “Major criminals aside, I’d rather deal with a male. Guys come right out and tell you what they think. Girls can be sneaky.” She checked the regulator clock on the wall as its hands tipped to five. “You handled it like we would have, Chipper. She was way out of line. Stop worrying. I doubt you’ll hear any more about it.” She’d told Holly that her own efforts with her teenager Nick had once led her to threaten to leave him at the Children’s Aid. Now the reconditioned son was a teacher near Prince George.